Huawei Mate 9: The current King of Huawei phones

The Huawei Mate 9 was released in late 2016. This review is smidge late but, it’s the Huawei Mate 9. It is a true successor to it’s predecessor the Mate 8 and the former competition of the fallen Note 7. The Mate 9 gives you familiarity and beauty all in the same package. How about we start with the most important feature…That stunning 5.9 IPS NEO LCD screen. While most would agree that 1080P is kind of weak for screen of this size; however while Quad HD or even the new 2:1 screen would make this screen mesmerizing. The 1080p is a marvelous addition! It is a strategy that while most question Huawei’s decision with this resolution, you should know it will reward you after owning it. It has stunning viewing angles and excellent sun visibility. I personally was not expecting that from a LCD panel, watching movies and reading articles would be a delight. The 1080p resolution helps in a particular area that’s a major priority as well, that Battery. Yes, that 4000mah monster battery along with the 1080p screen is like fried chicken and Cajun French fries…. Perfect…. They really compliment the phones endurance. Lasting for 6+hrs of SOT with heavier usage and nearly 2 days of battery life, that’s rare among flagships these days. So with that, we cant exclude the awesome Hisilicon Kirin 960 processor. It is also is a close competitor of SD 820/821. It works like a well oiled machine. It makes you wonder if without the heftiest of emui 5.0 (which I will get into a few), how fast this processor could really go. I have thrown one game, one power intensive app after next and this thing refuses to slowdown. Moving on, I could go on about the processor for days! So on to MLA, Machine Learning Algorithm, which assists the phone in staying as fast as possible. It also learns how you use your phone to serve you later. This is important as with time most devices can and have lost speed. MLA prevents this by adding 20% smoothness, 20% graphics boost and 50% improvement in the system over time. Despite I’m discussing this rather late in the review, let’s discuss the body of the phone. If you’ve used a Huawei Mate 8, you’ll recognize much of the design language used on the Mate 9. Huawei didn’t create much of an external update for the new phone, but it’s still a well-built handset. There’s a full metal unibody design. This feels premium in the hand; yet very familiar to the Mate 8 . However, there are very slightly curved edges on the front and back of the phone. It helps it to sit in the hand better than the Mate 8 did. It measures 157mm x 79mm x 7.9mm, making it a very similar size to the iPhone 7 Plus . While that is weird that the iPhone screen is smaller, Mate 9 is way more screen. In fact, it looks like it shrinks the screen of the iPhone. Moving on to EMUI 5.0… Nougat 7.0 is practically rewritten and hidden. Seriously, Emotion UI 5 is based on Android 7 Nougat software and is a Lighter skin than the previous. They’ve added an app drawer after popular demand for it in previous versions. There are lots Huawei-based apps, but they’re quite useful. Apart from the international and Chinese version, everything is similar except the USA version gets the Amazon Alexa App. That is awesome until you get to fact that it’s unfortunately not embedded in EMUI at all. It’s less like a google assistant and more like when Cortana was brought from Windowsphone to Android, kind of just there really. However, it is useful when activated and shows off possibilities of what it can do in the future. Well to sum up the experience of the UI, it’s not stock, Android and it’s really not going to be at this point. What it is however, is something different and will in someways require adjusting. Now drum roll please…. On to the camera. One thing that didn’t come from it’s predecessor is the lackluster camera. This camera Is no iPhone camera, but you are getting a camera with Awesome dynamic range, good OIS for recording video among a few other bells and whistles. The dual-lens Leica-branded camera from the Huawei P9 which has a 20MP monochrome sensor, and a 12MP color one. So Great news and ehh news the wide aperture mode is impressive, but will only work for some shots (mostly dayshots on some ways assists camera).

Most photos taken look and show awesome details. Like I said earlier, you really see the cameras shine in daylight. Low-light is good, but I have seen better (cough OnePlus 3). It’s tossed together with plenty of loveable modes Bokeh, HDR, 360 Mode etc. However, like I said it’s a vast improvement from the previous models and maybe with a update or two the camera could be awesome. This is my opinion of the camera and with this department it’s all about perspective and what pleases your eyes. You see from some of the samples what I mean. So to conclude this lengthy and somewhat late review, Huawei truly created a monster of a phone. There are some small things here and there but nothing to deter you from purchasing. Like I said at the beginning, this phone was brought out at a time where we were shaken by the downfall of the Note 7. While it doesn’t come with an S-pen, the same build quality or even details (I.e. the camera, screen resolution or user experience aka Samsung UX ), this phone will heal your heart where the Note 7 sort of broke it . With that in mind, you have to understand that Huawei phones come with great prices and unique looks; There not for everyone. I repeat the experience in software and certain features may steer you away. However, I tried out my first Huawei device which was the Mate 7, it was love from there but that’s not gonna be how you feel. So my suggestion is to try it out , you can’t go wrong this phone .